Trump is not Hitler.  The question that I wanted to answer by traveling to the CANDLES Holocaust Museum was how to keep a country that elected a man like Trump from following the path of Germany in the 1930s.  Was there a way to keep Hitler from becoming, well, Hitler?

Hitler was active in German politics from before the publication of Mein Kampf, in which expounded his anti-Semitic views.  Unlike Trump, he was politically prominent for at least eight years before becoming Chancellor.  Instead of taking over an existing party and dealing with existing elites, his Nazi Party was new.

Three failures of the German polity perhaps bear most of the blame for letting the failed Austrian artist become the butcher of Central Europe.  The first is the failure, deliberate or otherwise, of police to protect peaceful political gatherings from Nazi thuggery, which silenced people who were not pro-Nazi.  Second was the slavish acquiescence of non-Nazis in passing the Enabling Acts, which required a two-thirds majority.  Particular notice must be taken of the Catholic Centre Party, which suffered repressions in late Feburary 1933 but voted with their oppressor in March.  Third was the inability of what civil organizations remained (the Lutheran and Catholic Churches) to organize against the regime at a time when the Kristallnacht provoked Germans into opposition to Nazism and the uglier forms of anti-Semitism.

 

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